When I read through the release announcements of most Linux distributions, the updates seem repetitive and uninspired—typically featuring little more than a newer kernel, a desktop environment upgrade, and the latest versions of popular applications (which have nothing to do with the distro itself). It feels like there’s a shortage of meaningful innovation, to the point that they tout updates to Firefox or LibreOffice as if they were significant contributions from the distribution itself.

It raises the question: are these distributions doing anything beyond repackaging the latest software? Are they adding any genuinely useful features or applications that differentiate them from one another? And more importantly, should they be?

  • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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    2 months ago

    wouldn’t think so. automatic upgrades is as essential feature for desktop systems. I can’t appear at the dozens of my friends (significant amount of them elder) to upgrade their systems every few weeks or a month, or when e.g. firefox gets a critical vulnerability fix

    • BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 months ago

      Automatic updates are there with the right distro. Which highlights the need to look around for the right distro for the use case.

      Example being Opensuse Aeon - automatic updates - doesn’t even tell you it’s happening, just pops up “your system was updated” out of nowhere

      Automatic rollback - if an update broke something you would never know, at boot the system will pick the previous snapshot with no user intervention

      As far as the user is concerned you just have a working system; that it is the entire goal of that distro

      • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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        2 months ago

        I’ve read about Aeon a few months ago, and it seems very nice, but I wish I would have jotted down what made me not consider it because all I remember is that there were a few